I was not going to get cold feet. My gratitude to Aidan would not allow it. Into my darkest bewilderment he had shone a light. But his words about being David had struck me. “No, I don’t think so. It’s just…”

“What is it, Clara?” He was not impatient, but his breath had shortened and he was watching my face nervously.

“It’s stupid,” I confessed. “You’ll laugh at me.”

“I will not.”

“Um … well, you said that you would be David, but that just seems, you know, odd. You being David. I mean playing David.”

He went on looking at me, his eyes expressionless. I swallowed and went on.

“You see, I had never known any man before David. No one had ever taken notice of me, and courted me, and bought me things, and so on. And” – embarrassed, I began to slice bread and unwrap cheese – “well, you are a man, Aidan, but you are not David.”

I did not look at him. When he spoke, his voice was stifled. “So you are saying that it is difficult for you to imagine me as David.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Because you are in love with him and you are not in love with me?”

A thick silence fell in the small, old-fashioned kitchen. My heart beat fast. I laid the bread knife on the board, afraid that my hands were trembling too much to cut another slice. I raised my eyes to his. The blank look had been replaced by one so intense I could almost imagine the camera was rolling. Yet it was not Aidan’s “acting” look. Something darted through me from my head to my toes, as suddenly as a bullet. Something that warmed me and made my cheeks blaze.

It was unexpectedly difficult to say his name. “Ai…” I began, then changed my mind and began again. “I only know,” I said as steadily as I could, “that if what I felt for David was not love, then I do not know what it was. But I do not know what I feel for you.”

His gaze fell, and he took several quick puffs on his cigarette without blowing much smoke out between them. “Is that the honest truth?” he asked.

“That is the honest truth.”

“You do not despise me?”

“Despise you? Oh…”

My face still felt very hot but, propelled by a feeling stronger than embarrassment, I went and embraced him. He made no attempt to pull me closer to him; he barely even moved, as if he hardly noticed that I was there. But something inside my brain released itself, like a knot untying. I felt my scalp and neck muscles relax. Perhaps the time would come when I could do ordinary things again. Perhaps I would walk down some street with some man, laughing and talking. I had been unaware of the tension in my body, but now my attention was drawn to my physical presence. It was as if I had opened a door and seen myself standing there in the kitchen, and glimpsed the future.

“If I despised you once,” I told him, “that is because I was an ignorant child. Now I am no longer ignorant, and no longer a child, though you must make up your own mind what I am.” I stood back and, bashfulness getting the better of me, turned back to my bread and cheese.

“I know what you are, Clara,” he said to my back. His voice was low, and full of forgiveness and relief. “You are far too good for me.”